


Cold Comfort

by Rikku



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Grimdark, M/M, Necromancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-18
Updated: 2012-08-18
Packaged: 2017-11-12 09:26:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/489339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rikku/pseuds/Rikku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iroh is dead. Bolin does not deal with this well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Shades of dubcon, too. Really this is just - quite disturbing! You've been warned.

They all tried to help, after, each in their own way. Of course they did. They were good people.  


Korra hugged him tight enough his ribs creaked. It was painful in a way that felt right, and he was grateful for it, distantly.

The twins just looked at him for a minute. “He’s still thinking of you,” one reassured him in a hushed whisper, eyes wide and serious, and, as always, he could never tell whether or not they were serious, so he just frowned at the both of them, because he felt like he ought to. Wasn’t that what he was supposed to do? This wasn’t a time for jokes, he should feel annoyed. But he didn’t feel anything.

Verick dithered around him awkwardly for a while. Verick was a good man, despite what he wanted people to think, and a good man to have around, but he wasn’t at his best at situations that required anything other than charm and sleaze. “There’s a chap,” he said eventually, at a loss, patting vaguely at Bolin’s shoulder. “There, there. Um. There.”

He looked lost, so Bolin grinned at him encouragingly. It wasn’t hard. He’d been faking grins for years now. Iroh was one of the few people he ever let see –

Well. That was over now, wasn’t it. No one to call him out when he was faking it, so he could grin as much as he wanted, now, he could laugh and laugh and laugh, he could laugh until it felt like crying and why hadn’t he _cried_ , the love of his life was dead and all he could do was _stand_ there like some stupid unfeeling lump of rock and –

Iroh’s crew mainly just nodded to him, curt and straightforward, but then one stood straight and _saluted_ him, and that of all things was what made Bolin start crying, finally, big messy sobs like some kid, full-body sobs that left him breathless and gulping.

They all tried to help, and Mako came the closest to actually helping, of course he did, he always had. He stood at Bolin’s side, shoulder to shoulder, close but not too close. And he just ... stood there, silently, and didn’t say a word. Just kept him company.

“You never liked him,” Bolin said, after a while. 

Mako sighed a little. Bolin glanced at him, and was startled to see that his eyes were a little reddened, too. “Didn’t like him? He punched a _bomb_ once,” Mako said, and Bolin choked out a laugh that turned into more crying, and Mako smiled a little, his thin self-deprecating smirk, and rested a hand between his shoulder-blades, heavy and warm.

Mako stood with him there for a long time, longer than the others. Two brothers side by side with the fire painting their faces shades of gold. 

In the end even he left, though, and it was just Bolin and Iroh. Bolin stood straight and tall with his arms held behind his back, like a soldier or a cop, like Iroh would’ve wanted. He didn’t shift an inch. Earthbending came in handy, there; he would’ve surely wanted to fidget, if he hadn’t had that feeling of rock-solidness beneath his feet, keeping him anchored, keeping him sane.

“I wanted to bury you,” Bolin remarked, to the pyre. Iroh said nothing. Well, duh, he was barely a skeleton by then, his flesh had been all scorched away, he – he’d never say _anything ever again_ , never snap orders or murmur sweet nothings or rasp enthusiastically about his stupid plays. Not _ever_.

Why couldn’t they have buried him, at least then he’d be part of the earth, he’d be part of the world still in some small way – but this was better, of course it was, Iroh was Fire Nation to his bones, the bones that were burning now. There had been a spark in him that burned brighter than anything Bolin had ever seen, so this made sense, this is what he would’ve wanted. Burnt until there was nothing left of him but ashes.

The sun started to slip below the horizon, and the flames faded, and Bolin stood there alone until at last night time came and everything was sunken in shadows, everything. He even let himself mourn Iroh a little, let himself feel just the tiniest part of his own grief. He couldn’t let himself mourn him properly, not without tearing the whole damn country apart, but. Just a little. 

He stood there alone, until he wasn’t alone any more. 

All his friends tried to help him, in their own way, and that wasn’t limited to his _human_ friends. Pabu had refused to budge from his neck for hours, this morning, and Naga had licked his face raw, and now ...

“Hello again,” he said.

The night spirit made a little clicking-hissing noise and moved so it was in front of him, and now that it wasn’t trying to hide its eyes lit up, twin torches in the black chasm that was its face. “Man of earth,” it said. Its voice was like whispers and terrors and the wind in the trees at night. “Earth boy who loves too much and too well.”

“Weird night shadowy ice-spirit thing,” he said back, politely, and bowed a little.

The spirit curled its whip-thin tail around his legs, fondly. It was hard to make out its shape, even with its eyes glowing like that; it just looked like a stilt-limbed shadow, a jagged silhouette, a trick of the mind. A will-o’-the-wisp. “You have the talking,” it said, a rattling sigh. “You have the _way_.”

“Nice to see you too. Hey, buddy, I was wondering – okay, this is a weird thing to ask, and it’s okay if you ... I, just, um, remember how I helped you out with the, the thing with the farm and your land and, y’know, the fighting and such, and um I was thinking – not that I did that just to have a favour! I wanted to help you! Just, I was wondering if ... you could help _me_ , now. Uhh.” It was hard to ask because it was a hard thing even to think, it was a _bad_ thing to think, he knew that and so his words came out in his usual cheerful nonsense babble and he couldn’t seem to say what he wanted to. Maybe that was for the best. It was wrong. He knew that.

The spirit swung its empty head in the direction of the pyre, then back again. Its eyes burned brighter.

“Yes,” it said. “I can bring him back.”

Bolin breathed out shakily, and dropped to his knees. His legs just couldn’t support him any more. The spirit nudged up to him worriedly, and he automatically did what he’d do to reassure Pabu, patted at its head. Its fire was cold to the touch; more like ice, really. 

“I’m fine,” he said, once he could speak around the lump of hope mixed with horror in his throat, “I’m fine, I’m ... I’ll be fine, now. Because of this.” He breathed out once, twice. Felt the solidity of the earth beneath him, and thought of Iroh, and found the strength.

“What do I have to do?” he asked, and the spirit laughed, high and cackling.

“What are you willing to do, little earth boy?” it asked, standing up on two legs, and he stood up as well.

“Anything,” he said. He felt so empty, like a cave, like a shell; none of his usual solidity, he was wisp and wind, he was lost. But of this thing he was certain. “I would rip the whole world apart just to see his smile one more time. _Anything_.”

The spirit said nothing, just looked at him. Its eyes burned like stars, like ice, like Iroh when he fell from the sky. Bolin had thought he was a shooting star, for a moment, because he had been falling so fast. Far too fast.

The spirit chittered in amusement like it could somehow read his thoughts, and he snapped his mind away from the thought of Iroh dying Iroh falling dying dead. “Are you sure?” the creature said, leaning in uncomfortably close, eyes blinding-bright. “It may not work, you know, silly sweet rockling thing. If he comes back at all he will come back ... changed!”

 _Changed_. This – this wasn’t what Iroh would have wanted, not at all, this was the very opposite of what he would’ve wanted –

But Iroh wasn’t _here_ any more. What he wanted didn’t matter in the least.

“I’m sure,” Bolin said, grinning broad and empty and fake fake fake, because there was no one to call him out on it any more.


	2. Chapter 2

“Meet me at midnight,” the spirit had said, and here he was, dressed in his thickest coat and trying not to shiver all the same; the wind on the tundra was icy-cold, and it bit him to his bones.

The spirit loped up to him, larger than it had been before, towering above him; it shrunk down and said, “Earthling boy.”

“Ice spirit,” Bolin said.

“Let us begin,” the spirit said, its eyes lighting up, and there was a terrible eagerness in its voice that Bolin tried not to think about. It wasn’t good work he was doing, he knew that. It wasn’t good at all.

“Ashes!” the spirit sing-songed, and he shook his head to clear his thoughts and took out the bag containing all that was left of Iroh. He hesitated over it, till the spirit, impatient, snatched it out of his hand and shook it out over theh ground, porcelain-white snow that greyed as the ashes mixed in with it. Bolin stepped closer, but it hissed at him, so he stayed where he was, patiently, shivering, until it proudly uncoiled itself from around the thing and revealed it: a little man-shaped statue made out of packed snow, about the height of his knees.

Bolin eyed it doubtfully.

“I thought necromancy would involve more ... chanting,” he said. “Dark forces better left alone. That kind of thing.”

“Blood?” the spirit suggested.

“Yeah! Exactly.”

It cracked its tail through the air. “No. Stupid creature. _Blood_.”

“Oh,” Bolin said, and he stepped forward and tugged back his sleeve, tugged off the glove with his teeth. His skin was numb, so it didn’t really hurt. The blood trickled thickly down his wrist and dripped from his fingers, onto the crude sculpture; there wasn’t very much of it, and he remembered, belatedly, that he hadn’t been eating much, or drinking either. His blood looked black against the grey-white of the snowy ash, and thick.

“Make it,” the spirit said, but he didn’t need it to tell him; he knew what to do, somehow, deep in his bones. He knelt awkwardly in the snow and pulled off his other glove and tried to shape the snow, awkward at first with his fumbling fingers, until he found the earth in it and bent it, just a little, into shape. It didn’t look much like Iroh even when he was done with it, though.

“Doesn’t _matter_ , it’s a mere homunculus, earthboy, mudboy, do you know nothing of these things,” the spirit said. Its voice had more of a screech to it than normal, like wailing wind. Bolin wondered, idly, if it was nervous.

“What now?” he said, standing, and it grew up again and pushed him back down, firmly, with one sharp-clawed paw pressing hard on his shoulder. He sank back to his knees.

The spirit shrank small and rested its claws on the little Iroh’s shoulders, looked down at it thoughtfully. Its blazing blue eyes painted the snow around it in uncanny colours, like the aurora dancing high above. Bolin looked at the little statue, too. Snow and ashes and blood.

When he looked back up the spirit had vanished. He stared, uncomprehending; looked all around, but there was no one on all the vast whiteness of the plain but him.

He knelt there anyway, staring at the stars, and then, as his head nodded, at the snow figure, and then, at last, at the snow; and then nothing. He slept.

He dreamed of – he wasn’t sure what. Trees, maybe. Forest, swelteringly hot.

He woke to find Korra shaking him, face furiously miserable, Mako pale beside her. “You could’ve died!” she yelled, “what were you _thinking_ ,” and she hugged him tightly, too tightly; he let her hug him, then shake him furiously and yell at him more. He could barely feel his limbs. He could barely think, it was like thinking through cotton wool, everything was blinding white.

“What were you thinking,” Korra said again, despairing, and Bolin glanced in front of him, but there was no sign of the statue or the spirit either, no sign of anything.

“Nothing,” he said. “I ... I wasn’t thinking of anything.”

She sighed. Rested her head on his shoulder. She looked like she was about to say something, but then she just said, quietly, “C’mon, Bo, let’s go home,” and pulled him to his feet, let him lean on her as they started to walk back. Mako rested his hand between his shoulderblades again, but Bolin was too numb to feel the warmth of it. 

He didn’t say that it wasn’t home, not any more, not with no Iroh there. He didn’t say anything at all.

 

 

There was a blizzard that night, and then a knocking at his door.

Bolin woke instantly. Lay in his cold bed, thinking. Mako was at Korra’s place, as he tended to be these days; he was alone in this little A-frame hut, now that Iroh – he was alone. Mako was busy. Korra was busy. Verick wouldn’t visit this late. So who –

The knocking came again, and Bolin was leaping out of bed, scrambling slapdash down the stairs, rushing for the door eager as a child before his brain had even finished putting it together.  
He opened the door, and – “ _Iroh_ ,” Bolin said.

Iroh dusted snow off his immaculate jacket. “Bolin,” he said, something slightly questioning in his voice, and Bolin grabbed him, hugged him tight, so tight, and ... he was cold, he was deathly cold. But he _had_ been out in the snow. He needed to warm up, he needed to eat, they needed to talk about things who gave a damn it was _Iroh_ , it was really Iroh, he was back, solid and perfect in Bolin’s arms.

“I love you,” Bolin told him, frantically.

“I love you too,” Iroh said. “...Yes?”

Bolin bit at his lip. There was something almost hollow about the way Iroh was speaking. 

He ignored it.

“Yes,” he said, laughing, “yeah, you do,” and he pulled him inside.

The gang reacted about as you’d expect; incredulity ranging to horror, changing into cautious delight when they realised he was really there and alive, fading into ... something else, afterwards. Iroh’s skin was cold to the touch and he spoke very little, and he stared.

“Bolin, old thing,” Verick said, in what for him passed as a quiet voice, “there’s something wrong—”

“Bo, we need to talk about—”: Korra, impassioned and worried.

“Bro, what have you _done_ —”: Mako. Wide-eyed for once, anger in his voice to mask the fear beneath it.

It didn’t matter what they tried to say; Bolin ignored them, one and all. “He’s still sick,” he told them, closing the door on their faces. “He just needs to rest, that’s all.”

Iroh didn’t eat, and didn’t sleep, as far as Bolin could tell; he’d wake suddenly, in the middle of the night, and Iroh would just be lying beside him, cold as a pillar of ice, staring up at the ceiling. He did that whenever he wasn’t actively engaged in anything else, too; Bolin talked to him all he could, tried to draw him out, but still Iroh spent hours, sometimes, standing still and staring blankly and doing nothing. Nothing at all. 

Bolin thought of the Iroh who’d prowled his ship restless, who’d launched himself into the air for the sheer joy of it. He said nothing.

Things came to a head when he walked in on Iroh holding down the neighbour’s cat, ignoring its struggles and yowls; Bolin had time to say, “What are you _doing_ ,” appalled, but he couldn’t seem to move from the spot. Iroh’s hand plunged down into the cat and ripped it open, raggedly. Organs spilled out, staining the wooden floor slippy-red. The cat thrashed and screamed and slowed, finally, and Iroh examined it thoughtfully, parted its ribcage with his fingers to peer inside.

Bolin pulled him up and away, finally, clinging to Iroh as though it could ever even help. “What are you doing what are you doing what are you doing, Iroh, no,” he said nonsensically, desperately, burying his face in Iroh’s chest like he had in the old days. Iroh’s arms wrapped around him with practiced precision, hands patting at his shoulders then combing, bloodied, through his hair.

“I just wanted to see how it worked,” Iroh explained, like this was perfectly reasonable. 

Bolin choked back a sob, then retched, sank to his knees and vomited and cried messily while Iroh rubbed mechanically at his back. There’d be bloodstains on his jacket now. They’d be a pain to wash out. Iroh always had been better at doing the laundry.

“I can’t do this,” he whispered at last, wiping his face. “Love, I can’t, this isn’t me, this isn’t _you_. This – this was a really bad idea, oh, _Roh_ —” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I miss you,” he admitted, out loud. “So, so much. I – I wish you were here to complain about doing the washing and, and do stupid heroics, so long as they didn’t get you killed this time, I wish – I wish you were here to get me out of this mess, ha ... I miss you. So damn much."

“You see someone else when you look at me,” Iroh said, and Bolin blinked up at him. Iroh was staring at him intently. It was the same way he’d looked the first time after he came back when someone had tried to shake his hand since, the same way he’d looked wrist-deep in gore. Like he was trying to figure out a puzzle.

“I see _you_ ,” he said, denying it, but it was perfectly true. How many times had he glanced at Iroh expecting to see dancing golden eyes with weary creases at the corners, expecting a wry remark – and instead seen this, this _thing_ , standing there cold and silent. “Who ... who you used to be, I mean.”

Iroh nodded, curt and captainly, and in that moment he could so easily have been his old self that it wrenched Bolin’s heart.


	3. Chapter 3

He acted almost more like himself again, after that. A little. Maybe. Maybe Bolin just deluded himself that he did; but he was perfectly willing to be deluded, if that were the case.

Anyway he’d been acting enough like almost-himself that Bolin didn’t think twice when Iroh kissed him, not the awkward closed-mouth kisses he’d tried to press on Iroh with early on but an actual _kiss_ , open-mouthed and greedy and wet. Bolin opened to him, and who cared if he was corpse-cold, it didn’t matter, not right now, not with his fingers quick and nimble playing at Bolin’s clothes, his body solid and _real_ , alive, he was alive, wasn’t he? This was Iroh, wasn’t it?

Iroh kissed him deeper, savage, biting, and Bolin moaned and forgot about thinking.

They were up against a wall quite soon, Iroh pushing, Bolin yielding because he was so, so sick of passive doll-Iroh who stood still where you left him and never did a thing for himself, this was so good, it had been entirely too long and Iroh was nuzzling at his neck just like he always had, and Bolin moaned again, bucked encouragement, lost himself in it.

Iroh lifted his head and stared at Bolin – intently. Like he was a puzzle. Bolin grew suddenly sharply aware of what a bad idea this was, and he tried to move, but – fuck. Iroh had him pinned sure and steady against the wall, and his solid weight was nowhere near as reassuring now.

“Let me go,” Bolin said. His voice sounded very small. Scared. He missed the days when Iroh wasn’t something to be scared of.

Iroh kissed his jaw, his ear. “What do you see when you look at me?” he said, conversationally, his breath icy-cold on Bolin’s neck. “I’m empty. What do you see?”

“What?” said Bolin, uncomprehending, and Iroh growled, nipped at his ear painfully hard.

“What do you see that I _don’t_!” he yelled, furious and manic and for a sick sad moment Bolin looked into his blazing eyes and thought, _at least he’s feeling something_ , and then the moment was over because Iroh was biting at his face –

Oh spirits, no. No. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no NO –

“Iroh, no, stop, no,” Bolin whimpered, until it cut off in a cry of pain, and all the while Iroh was gnawing at his eye, loosening it around the edges. And then he closed his jaws neatly around Bolin’s eye, and bit down. 

Bolin whimpered and shook against the wall and, when he collapsed, sagged useless, held up by Iroh still. Iroh swallowed the slimy bloody thing in one slick gulp, licking his lips, licking the empty socket when he was done.

Bolin fainted.

“Oh, I remember now,” he heard someone saying, distantly, as the black mists took him; “ _fire_ ,” and then he was gone.

When he woke up there were warm hands holding him steadily, a familiar terrifying voice rattling out frantic words. Bolin flinched away, scrabbled away, no, no, please no –

“Bo?” Iroh said, and Bolin shook his head, crouched down small, he’d had enough, no more, how much was one man supposed to take?

... Wait. He’d sounded worried.

Bolin opened the eye that remained to him, which was gummed with tears but still usable enough. “Roh?” he croaked.

Iroh looked crumpled and panicky, and bloodstained, and very, very tired, and alive. “You are in _urgent need of medical attention_ ,” he snapped, his voice fretful and worried and loving and possessive and protective, all at once, and Bolin stared at him disbelieving.

“You’re back,” he said, and he flung himself at Iroh, clutching him close, “you’re back you’re back you’re baaaaack!”

“You’re bleeding,” Iroh said softly, but he gripped him tight. Bolin could feel the pump of his heartbeat, worry-quick. He realised, distantly, that he hadn’t heard it once these past few weeks.  
Iroh’s skin was warm under his hands.

“You’re back,” Bolin said, blissful, “you’re _back_ ,” and he collapsed against him and laughed and laughed and laughed.

A little while later, something occurred to him.

“Hey,” he said, eagerly. “Can I have an _eyepatch_?”

Iroh was padding his eye, carefully, stemming the bleeding; it was hard because it was hard to get a bandage at it, in its position, and also because Bolin kept on fainting. The pain was pretty bad and Bolin didn’t mind it in the slightest, not with Iroh kneeling with him on the blood-slicked floorboards cradling Bolin’s face in gentle hands.

Iroh paused in his work long enough to snort. “Let’s start with a hospital and a good waterbender, hm?” he said. It felt like years since Bolin had heard that fond amusement in his voice, and at the same time it was as familiar as an old blanket, wrapping around him, warm.


	4. or alternately

That ending, all sweet and things-will-be-okay-in-the-end-ish - that doesn’t actually happen. It’s Bolin’s halllucination as he lies there dying of blood loss, cold and alone.

And when he’s dead Iroh cradles his body and tries to mourn, because he knows it’s what he ought to do, he just doesn’t know why. He doesn’t understand. All he wanted was to see how he _worked_ …

They burn him again. It sticks this time.


End file.
